


Call of Reverie

by SigmaSagittarii



Category: Disney - All Media Types
Genre: Characters to be added as i update, Multi, big crossover somehow turns into a really complicated self-contained monster of a narrative, lots of ocs here but even more disney characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-06 23:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16397363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SigmaSagittarii/pseuds/SigmaSagittarii
Summary: When Jessi Marcelo wakes up one day to find her entire town has been dragged into a parallel dimension populated with Disney characters, of all things, she unwillingly becomes a key part of an adventure that will decide the future of both worlds.Started out as a kind of self-indulgent SYOC fic over on ff.net and now it's... big and complicated, but still equally ridiculous because Disney. Like if Kingdom Hearts had more obscure characters and also more depression.





	1. The Key

**Author's Note:**

> “It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.”  
> -Good Omens

Jessi Marcelo woke up and her entire high school was gone. 

The building, not the people. It had happened overnight, which was better because if it had happened in the day then who knows what would’ve happened to all the people in there, but it was still gone. Really gone. Literally, physically, completely gone. Like a big hand had come and grabbed it and just left an empty field behind. Nobody had even noticed it get removed, which was the weird part because somebody would’ve seen a fire or a bomb or something, even at night. But there was nothing left. 

That’s what the news report was saying, anyways. Jessi was sitting on the couch eating cereal straight out of the box, tearing up the little squares of shredded wheat and eating them one piece at a time. Her brother Herman was in his room upstairs calling his friends, which she knew because he was shouting. His school had been canceled, too, because the whole town didn’t really know what to do in a situation like this. That was lucky for him, Jessi guessed, but she wasn’t sure if that would last long. Meanwhile she got to brag that she wouldn’t be returning to school indefinitely because her school building got wiped off the face of the planet. So it was still a victory on her end.

Her mother was on the phone, too, standing right there in the kitchen and watching the television set through the doorway. Probably calling the school board, as if they could do anything about it at this point. She looked worried, because she was often worried. She didn’t seem to care much that Herman was yelling excitedly upstairs even though he was very nearly loud enough to drown out the television. Though they had been watching the television screen for several hours now, everything still felt like a dream. No one had discovered much of anything yet.

It was 11:45, give or take, and the police investigation hadn’t really wrapped up but they’d left the field open to whoever because they hadn’t found anything there, of course. So different news stations lingered around, still broadcasting, because this was the only news that’d ever really happened in their little town and maybe they expected the school to drop back out of the sky or something. Jessi didn’t know. She wasn’t even sure what the police had done, but early that morning around six or so when they’d woken up and turned on the news they’d seen the whole field taped off and covered in police dogs. They’d eliminated most options, though, because there was no trace left behind of anything and no way an entire building could just be displaced like that. Scientists somewhere were probably losing their minds over this whole thing.

Jessi set the box down on the floor (Frank, their lazy Boston Terrier, looked over in interest but didn’t attempt to move from his dog bed) and then took the stairs two at a time into her room, getting dressed quickly and tugging a baseball cap over her long, black braid. She pulled on her ratty tennis shoes, the dirty white ones that she’d partially duct-taped back together without her mom knowing (Jessi disliked quite a few things, and breaking in new shoes was one of them) and pulled on a jacket. It was cloudy outside, like a storm was rolling in, which felt pretty fitting for the whole situation. But the sun was peeking out behind the clouds occasionally still so at least she wouldn’t have to worry about rain yet.

Her phone only had two texts, both of which were from the same person because she only really had one friend. Jessi didn’t mind admitting that. She just wasn’t loud like Herman was. Her mother called her ‘detached’ and she guessed that was one word for it, though it wasn’t as though Jessi didn’t care about people. Optimism was just a hard emotion to work up to but people seemed to expect it immediately all the time as if she really cared about hearing how the school play was going or what somebody’s new boyfriend was like. There were more important things to focus on than that, like graduating on time even though she skipped class at every opportunity. 

Her friend’s name was Clancy, and she looked like someone who cried when they got a B in their home economics class (which she did). She was slightly awkward but very friendly and whenever she came over they’d work on homework together and Clancy would talk softly about how pretty Jessi’s hair was or her latest knitting project or something (Jessi didn’t actually know if Clancy knitted or not, but it seemed like something she might do). It was alright, though she didn’t have enough experience with close friendships to know if it was good by those standards. The two of them had met in middle school and Clancy had latched onto her, probably because Jessi didn’t have any friends prior to that. 

The texts weren’t really anything of consequence-- of course she’d seen the school thing, it was on every news station-- so she ignored them, tucking her phone into her back pocket and taking the stairs back down to the living room. Frank had his nose buried in the box of cereal, but Jessi’s mother hadn’t seemed to notice. The news channel on the screen was now interviewing random townsfolk who had come out to see, but no one had anything of consequence to say. No one had even really processed what had happened, much less formed actual theories about what was going on. They’d probably have more luck having scientists call in or something. Jessi supposed they were trying to get as much information as they could from the scene before some important organization came and forced everyone out so they could examine the dimensional wormhole that had swallowed up the school building. Or some other weird thing like that. Jessi wasn’t a scientist. 

“Going out to see the school,” Jessi said at as low a volume as she could manage, poking her head around the doorway to the kitchen. Her mother arched her eyebrows and pulled the phone an inch or two away from her face for a second.

“Jessi, it isn’t very safe--”

“Mom, there’s like fifty news channels there. I won’t even manage to get close enough for anything to happen if it does.” Which was true, probably. And it wasn’t as though she really thought anything would happen-- it seemed a little late for it at this point. “I’m just going to check it out and then I’ll be right back. Maybe you’ll see me on T.V. or something.” She shrugged. 

Her mother pursed her lips, but after a half-second of studying Jessi’s gaze she pulled the phone back towards her cheek. “Be quick.” She had no real argument to stand on, anyways. Jessi knew that both of them were fully aware that there was no explanation for this, or at least not one that put anyone in real danger. 

Still, Jessi thought it was strange how much her mother seemed to worry about her poking her nose into everything. She didn’t purposefully get involved in much of anything-- nothing ever happened in Salt River to begin with, and she lacked what her mother called ‘drive’. Jessi took that to mean ‘enthusiasm’ or ‘the ability to care about much’, which just made it all the more hypocritical that her mother worried about her safety when she never did anything stupid like Herman did with his tendency to jump his bike off of hills and break bones jumping off of roofs just to prove he could stick a landing. Jessi’s mother seemed to worry about her in general, though. Maybe it was just something mothers did once their kid hit eighteen.

Jessi gave a lazy salute, backing out of the garage door. Her bike’s front tire was about half-flat, but it was fine enough to ride. They lived in the middle of a street in a pretty small neighborhood about a ten minute walk from the school and a ten minute car ride from the main part of town. There were empty fields stretching around the edges of the neighborhood, and a variety of small creeks that branched out from the river on the far edge of the town. The place was named after said river-- Salt River. Jessi’s mother often said it wasn’t even really a town, it was more of a community because of how small it was, and while Jessi didn’t really know how populations worked or impacted the classification of a city she was inclined to agree with that assessment. 

Jessi hadn’t lived there her whole life, but she’d lived there for most of it. They’d moved when Herman was born (when Jessi was seven), and he was eleven now, so Jessi didn’t really have many memories of wherever they’d lived before. The rest of their family still lived back in the old city, which was in Philadelphia, but they visited occasionally so Jessi didn’t mind that much. She didn’t have many aunts or uncles or cousins to speak of anyways so there was no real loss. She hadn’t thought about where she was moving for college, though. She hadn’t thought much about college at all, despite the fact that she was graduating at the end of the year. 

In a way, the school disappearing was some sort of blessing. There wasn’t any sort of future planning to get caught up in when the whole world seemed to be on hold. She wondered how long it would be until the government and scientists and big news companies came by and overran the whole town. It was strange how detached she felt, even in the face of something this big. Herman felt the same, or at least Jessi thought he did, given that he seemed more excited about missing school than the fact that the school was missing. Maybe it just didn’t seem real. Everything was just floating because how could normal life continue when something didn’t make any sense? How did people in The Twilight Zone usually respond to these things?

The path to the school was quick, running alongside nothing but fields for the most part. Normally Jessi would’ve been able to spot the school from a few minutes away, but today there was nothing but another empty space. The news vans were the most noticeable thing in the area. There were a couple more of them now, hanging around waiting for something to drop out of the sky or maybe just waiting to see if the people would disappear next. 

Disembarking from her bike, Jessi leaned it up against a tree a ways back from the field, taking care to make sure no one saw her leave it. Not that there’d been a problem with bike thieves in the past, but news like this could bring anybody into town. Including notorious bike thieves. 

It was hard to get through the barricade of reporters, or at least enough to see anything. Jessi found herself weaving through various vans and pushing aside people milling around and spectating the field. They all crowded around the edges mostly, as if afraid of stepping into the space where the school had once been. One or two teenagers had moved over to the center of the field, though. They probably thought they were showing off, or maybe they just wanted to be sure they were on camera. No one was really watching them and even the cameras weren’t focused on them. It felt as though there was a strange mix of danger and safety. The field was too dangerous for the reporters to move to directly but not so dangerous that a couple of kids couldn’t go and run around in it. It was really just a normal field, all things considered. The danger was from the unknown.

Jessi tried to pick her way closer, but was stopped suddenly as a camera was shoved into her face.

“Excuse me, young lady,” said the reporter standing next to the camera, and Jessi turned over her shoulder to glance down at her. Jessi was the tallest person in her family, and significantly taller than average otherwise, so it was a bit awkward given how short the reporter was. “Do you attend school here?”

“I did, yeah,” said Jessi. 

“Did?” The reporter pressed.

“I mean, the school’s gone.”

“You don’t think it will come back?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know how it left in the first place.” 

“I see,” said the reporter, who for some reason didn’t seem thrilled with Jessi’s honesty. “And how is this going to affect the rest of your school year?”

“Guess I just won’t graduate on time,” Jessi said. It was only November, though, so it was a bit too early to say if she’d be graduating on time to begin with even if the school hadn’t disappeared. 

“And you don’t have any idea what happened here?”

“No,” said Jessi. “Do you have any idea what happened here?”

The reporter didn’t respond, and instead turned to catch the attention of another townsperson who had pushed their way through the crowd to ogle the empty field. Jessi, glad for the interruption, slipped around the cameraman to jog past the other reporters. 

She wasn’t sure what she expected when she crossed the threshold of the school. Or the place the school had been, rather. It was almost hard to tell what with everything being gone, even the sidewalks, but her feet knew the path into the building well enough that if she didn’t focus on the grass at her feet she could almost imagine the walls surrounding her. The teens further out across the field were doing cartwheels, ignoring both Jessi and the crowd of reporters and spectators. A couple other townsfolk, most of them younger, cautiously ran out several seconds after Jessi did, encouraged by the bravery of the other teenagers. 

Jessi didn’t really have any plan as she wandered. She tried to map out the place her classrooms would have been, the spot her locker was in, but it got harder to tell the more she walked aimlessly. More and more individuals found their way over to the empty space, too, and slowly the strangeness of it all faded. It was just an empty field full of people, really, even if those people were only together in the same place because the fabric of reality was coming undone.

With the spell broken and her interest in the situation satisfied, Jessi turned to look past the reporters circling around the field and all the other cars and bikes pulling in. She could barely see her own bike hidden in the treeline, and with a vaguely unsatisfied feeling of confusion she meandered her way back towards it. 

Or she started in that direction, at least. She only got a few steps in before something at her feet caught her eye. It was something bronze that glinted dully in the sunlight that was breaking through the oncoming clouds. Nudging it with the toe of her shoe, Jessi bent down to scoop it into her palm. It was a key-- an old-fashioned one, nothing that would be used for any sort of modern-day lock. It was scratched up and worn, but surprisingly not very dirty. 

Scanning the field around her, Jessi searched the grass for anything else that may have been left behind, but nothing caught her eye immediately. No one else in the field seemed to be seeing anything, either, even though most of them had their eyes fixated on the ground around them. Maybe they were trying to ignore the fact that there used to be walls in the place they were walking. 

Jessi stood there for a second or two, looking at the key in her hand. She felt vaguely excited, just for a moment-- excited and perhaps a bit smug. Either this had been left behind by the school or the school had been built on top of it, she thought, and she was the one who found it. None of the reporters seemed to have noticed, or else they just didn’t care that she had picked something up, because none of them were moving in her direction. She thought for a moment what someone should do in a situation like this. Did people usually turn old keys in to antique stores or something? Salt River probably didn’t even have one of those. 

After a moment of consideration, Jessi tucked the key into the pocket of her jacket and all but sprinted back across the field to her bike. 

The roads were busy on her way home, or at least busier than they had been on the way there and far busier than she’d seen them before. By then most of the news teams who could get there in a reasonable amount of time were already there, so it was mostly people from outside of the city coming to see. As if their physical presence would make the situation any different. Maybe they just wanted to take family photos in front of the empty field where a school once stood. At least if it never came back Salt River would have something to bring tourists in. They’d probably put a museum or something there, if they were smart. 

By the time she got back to the house her mother had switched from one news station to another, a national channel that was interviewing people who might know what was going on. Important scientists and things like that. Apparently more were heading directly to the scene, but Jessi didn’t really know what they expected to find. The guy on the television sounded like he was making a lot of baseless theories from nothing-- things that only sounded legitimate because he used long and complicated words.

“Did you see me on the news?” Jessi asked as she walked through the front door. Her mother was on her phone still, though she was sprawled across the couch now rather than standing in the kitchen. She was texting someone rather than calling.

“No,” her mother responded, hardly glancing up.

Jessi shrugged. “They didn’t ask me much, anyway.” And she couldn’t blame them. What was there to ask? Nobody knew anything.

“Wait, what?” Herman poked his head out of the kitchen-- or, more accurately, out of the fridge where he’d been scavenging for food. “You got on the news?”

 

“There’s a million reporters down there,” Jessi said. “Everybody’s on the news.”

Herman stared at her for a second as if trying to judge how serious she was, and then put a bag of ham back in the fridge. “Mom, can I go down to the school?”

“If Jessi will go with you,” said their mother. Her worry for Jessi paled in comparison to her worry for Herman, which was fair. He was only eleven and he was a magnet for trouble. 

“What? I just got back,” Jessi protested. 

“See if Clancy will go with you,” her mother suggested. “You two can talk while Herman bothers the reporters.”

“I’m not gonna bother them,” Herman said, but he was grinning. “I’m just gonna make sure I get their attention.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll manage.” 

Jessi groaned under her breath, but conceded. She didn’t mind going back that much, she guessed, seeing as there was little else to do, and she and her brother got along for the most part. It was just the principle of the thing-- he easily could’ve gone with her earlier. But maybe Herman would find something like the key or maybe some scientist had shown up with real results. 

“Let me text her,” Jessi said, bounding her way back up the stairs.

Clancy agreed, of course, though it took some convincing on Jessi’s part because Clancy wasn’t sure how safe it was. She’d been watching the news religiously since that morning, same as everyone else, and it’d only increased her anxiety about the situation. Jessi pointed out that with all those people there nothing could really happen, and at this point it was one in the afternoon, several hours after the school had initially disappeared. If something wasn’t happening now then it wasn’t going to happen at all. Clancy decided to just meet them there, as she could drive (Jessi kept failing her driving test) and it was easier than biking. She lived twenty minutes or so away from Jessi and Herman, so Jessi couldn’t blame her for that. 

Before she went back downstairs, Jessi dug through the drawers in her closet for a while before pulling out a bronze necklace. The charm that hung on the end was a simple ‘J’, something she’d gotten for a birthday when she was younger. Unhooking the clasp, she slipped the key onto the chain with the charm. It was large enough that the charm rested perfectly in the loop of the key, and the colors matched well. Satisfied, she hooked it around her neck. 

The ride back to the school was as uneventful as Jessi’s first trip there, though they had to avoid traffic this time around. The two of them raced most of the way there on their bikes and made it within a reasonable amount of time. Clancy’s car was parked far back from the field, out of the way of all the other cars pulling into the area. A circle was starting to have formed around the perimeter of the school, though the field was filling in with people at this point.

“I’m gonna go get on the news,” Herman said as soon as their bikes were leaning up against Clancy’s car, and he took off running towards the cameras. 

Clancy smiled, watching him go. Her curly blonde hair was pulled back by a headband. “Guess he’s got a goal in mind, huh?”

“That was the whole reason he wanted to come down here,” Jessi said. “It’s not like he’s even got anything useful to say if they interview him.”

“He’s excited, I guess,” Clancy shrugged. “You have to admit, Salt River isn’t exactly the most exciting place to live. Might as well get his five seconds of fame while he’s got the chance.”

“Sure, fame,” said Jessi. “If you want to call it that.”

Clancy laughed, not at all put off by Jessi’s unenthused attitude. Jessi was quiet for a moment as the two of them started dodging various others trying to get closer to the school, meandering closer aimlessly. She ran her fingers over the key hanging from her necklace, looking at Clancy out of the corner of her eye. She wanted to ask her about it, just so someone knew, even though Jessi didn’t think it was anything that really mattered that much. But the air around them was filled with the noise of other people’s conversations and she was certain her voice would be drowned out. 

They stayed like that for a while, weaving in and out of various townsfolk and visitors on the edge of the circle. It was a strange feeling, knowing how many strangers were here just to stare at something that had become their new reality within several hours. Clancy occasionally asked her questions, sometimes about theories and other times just about what she’d been doing recently even though they’d just seen each other at school last Friday. Jessi was half-distracted, thinking of the key and trying to keep an eye on Herman. Or, rather, an ear on Herman, because he was chattering excitedly to any camera he could find, loud enough to be heard over the other conversations going on around them. At some point Herman had moved into the center of the field, where a couple news teams had ventured. He was pointing out various rooms, or whenever the rooms would’ve been. Jessi didn’t even think he really knew what he was talking about, but he had the confidence to convince everyone that he did. 

Jessi turned away from looking in Herman’s direction and instead faced Clancy, who had just asked a question that Jessi hadn’t quite heard entirely. She was about to speak, but then… something shifted.

It was hard to pinpoint what it was at first. It seemed like a great deal happened in a very short moment, as though time had slowed to a crawl for that brief second. There was a strange noise, like a tearing or a buzzing or a hum (Jessi couldn’t even place which one it was specifically, but it was overwhelming and yet muted as though merely a background noise to the reality of the situation). The air around them grew still, and then there was a great rush of motion in the wind and sky around them. 

Clancy’s face held a look of shock, and then of horror, and she cried out. She was the first to do so, but then the others in the area joined her. Jessi, alarmed, turned back over her shoulder in time to look to the center of the field that was now entirely empty. Herman was gone. All of them were gone, the whole group that had been within the school building’s walls, or lack of walls.

She barely had time to process this fact before several other reporters, closer to the area where the school had once been, suddenly weren’t there anymore. 

Jessi couldn’t describe how it happened. They were standing there and then they weren’t. There was just a space where they had been. For a moment one or two had yelled in surprise, though Jessi wasn’t sure if it was in response to the previous disappearances of because they felt something, and their stance had shifted nearly imperceptibly as though bracing for a fall and then they were gone. 

Something in Jessi screamed to run, but her feet wouldn’t move in time and she reached out with one hand to grasp for Clancy, who had already backed away, frightened and confused. Jessi instead brought her hand up to her necklace, where she clasped the key in a fist. 

The townsfolk standing three feet in front of her disappeared. 

Jessi wondered how much of this was broadcasting and if her mother had seen Herman disappear. She wanted to take her phone out to call her but there wasn’t any time, her brain was moving much faster than the reality of time around them and in the next instant the sky clouded with a strange darkness and a great noise rushed into Jessi’s ears all at once. She felt the ground shift away below her and her stomach dropped and then it all just seemed to be... gone.


	2. The Circle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You don't get explanations in real life. You just get moments that are absolutely, utterly, inexplicably odd.”  
> -Neil Gaiman

The light behind Jessi’s closed eyelids was a blinding white.

Or so she figured. She woke with a pounding headache that made squinting her eyes painful, but when she tried to keep them closed lightly the white seeped in under her eyelashes and stung painfully. 

The rest of her body was in pain, too, though it was more of a persistent ache that ran up and down it than it was a sharp stinging. She twitched her fingers and her toes, turning her head side to side, and was relieved to find she could at least move. It didn’t feel as though she had any tubes running into her, so she couldn’t be in that bad of shape. It was probably just a case of having been asleep for far too long, and she shifted her weight tenderly to see if anything felt broken, but that seemed fine as well. It felt as though she’d fallen a great distance, which made sense when she thought about it further. It had seemed like she was falling, back in the field. 

The field. The school. Clancy. Herman. 

Jessi shot bolt-upright and then cried out in pain as her back and ribs protested loudly, aching so sharply that she bent over and rested her head on her knees. Her headache was momentarily relieved due to the pressure as she pushed her forehead against her knees with force, but the ache was slow in fading and for a while her breathing was deep and she hissed through her teeth every time a throb ran through her torso. The light still stung her eyes, and she found it difficult to keep them open long enough to look around. It was like snow on a sunny day. She couldn’t stand it. 

Blindly, she felt around her and realized she was on a bed with metal railings along the side. Like a hospital bed, which made sense enough in her mind for some reason or another. Maybe the ground had opened up and she’d fallen in and there was a moleman civilization underneath the field and they’d taken her to a hospital. It made as much sense as anything else that had happened that day. She wished she could chalk it up to a bad dream but sometimes you just know you aren’t dreaming, and you get the feeling of dread that something has happened that you can’t go back from. The entire day felt like that. 

If it was even the same day anymore. She figured it was daytime, because the sun was making the place so unbearable, but who knew how long it had been since the events of that afternoon. 

Jessi grasped onto the railing on one side of her bed and slowly attempted to pull herself off of it, but it made her ribs and shoulders hurt just trying it and she instead sat there blinking through squinted eyes, running a hand over her face. Her forehead was sweaty and she realized that she had covers over her legs, which was no doubt contributing to the heat. She shifted them off of her and flexed her toes. She was still wearing the same outfit she’d worn before, and when she looked down through squinted eyes she was relieved to find the key was still around her neck. The weight was familiar, at this point. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” A sudden voice startled her enough to jump slightly, which her body protested. They were shouting, too, or at least it sounded like shouting in the echo of the room she was in. Her head pounded as she heard thumps against the floor and suddenly the voice was next to her bed, on her left side near her elbow. “Whad’ya think you’re doin’?”

“What?” Said Jessi, but her mouth was more dry than she realized and it ended up sounding like it was full of cotton so the result was more of a garbled, “whrbfgh?” 

“You need to lie down! I told Terminus to- Terminus!” The voice shouted, and then stomped off elsewhere. 

Stop shouting, Jessi thought crossly, but she’d managed to open her eyes long enough to realize that her vision was very blurry and she was just trying to stay upright without giving into dizziness so she couldn’t manage the words. A wave of nausea hit her just for a moment and she squinted her eyes tightly, curling in on herself more until it subsided. The pounding had spread to her ears just from the shouting of whoever had been in the room previously. 

Several seconds went by before Jessi’s vision returned to her enough to look around the room. She was, in fact, on a hospital bed, sitting directly opposite a long wall with large windows. Most of the curtains were closed, but hers had been opened. All she could see outside was clouds and the glaring sunlight, which explained why it had been such a pain to open her eyes. On either side of her there were more rows of hospital beds, most of which had curtains between them for privacy. The rest of the room was empty. Next to her bed there was a tray with a pair of reading glasses and a half-finished cup of water, which Jessi took and stuck her finger in (if only to confirm it was actually water and not rubbing alcohol or something else she’d greatly regret) before sipping carefully. It didn’t ease the dryness of her mouth very much, but it was something. 

The thumping of feet signaled someone returning, and Jessi turned and craned her stiff neck over her shoulder to watch the doorway as they entered.

The person who entered first looked briefly surprised to see her sitting up, but then it switched to a smug look of pride. He wore a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a red vest over it. The rest of his outfit was equally pristine, all the way down to the gloves on his hands. His mustache was curled at the ends and he wore a top hat. Jessi got the impression that he was the type to always wear a top hat. 

The second person who entered was a rabbit. 

Not a small, normal sort of a rabbit. A rabbit standing up on two legs. A rabbit wearing pants. Or shorts, maybe. It was hard to tell with the way its legs were shaped. They were too noodle-like, and it made Jessi’s joints ache just looking at them for too long so instead she tried to pry her eyes elsewhere, though they wouldn’t quite obey. She was hallucinating, surely. Or dreaming after all. Or she really was in The Twilight Zone. That wasn’t even the strangest thing about his appearance, though. She could tell from looking at him that he was somehow different from the man in the top hat, and different from herself, but she couldn’t explain how. Her first thought was that he was too cartoonish in the way he moved, the way he looked, but looking between the two of them she couldn’t really separate them into two different types of realities. It was unsettling, that sort of strangeness that she couldn’t put to words. She was spared from thinking further on the matter in the next moment, however.

“Ah!” said the man in the top hat, with exaggerated surprise. “She’s awake! A miracle!”

The rabbit fumed silently for a second, crossing his arms tightly. His strange, strange noodle arms. Jessi noticed blearily that his hands appeared far too large for them, something that would have looked vaguely horrific if he didn’t have that cartoon-like otherworldliness to his appearance. “You were supposed to be watching her until the professor got back!” Jessi realized as he spoke that he was the one who’d been in the room previously. “And you sure weren’t in here when I came in!”

“Watching her? I was under the impression I was brought in to cure her.” The top-hatted man placed a hand on his chest in an offended manner.

“Brought in? I didn’t want you here! You haven’t done a single thing to help us since you got here! In fact, you’re only here because you were trying to scam us out of-”

“Foolish of you to turn down the help of a genuine, certified doctor, you know.”

“Genuine?” The rabbit scoffed. “Certified?”

“Doctor, yes,” the man with the mustache took the liberty of finishing for him.

Jessi couldn’t be certain, but it felt as though her headache was worsening just having to listen to their bickering. But it didn’t end. The man was still talking. 

“-Especially considering I’m the one who cured her. With this,” with a flourish, he pulled a small flask out of the pocket of his vest and presented it to the rabbit, who looked skeptical. 

“No you didn’t.”

“Of course I did. Look,” the man leaned down closer to the rabbit’s level and pointed at the label of the flask, reading it aloud. “Doctor Terminus’ Miracle Cure-all. What else could explain her abrupt recovery, hm?”

The rabbit stared at it for a second before swiping the flask from his hand and taking a swig, despite the man’s cut-off protest. He screwed up his face and shoved it back in Terminus’ (Jessi assumed that was the man’s name, at least) grip immediately afterwards.

“Whiskey?” The rabbit spat. “You gave a kid whiskey?”

“I’m eighteen,” said Jessi, because that was the first part of the conversation that made sense enough for her to jump in. The whiskey would explain her burning throat and dry mouth, she guessed. She wasn’t really great with alcohol, not that she was supposed to be drinking it at her age anyways, though she didn’t even recall being awake previously to take a sip of said alcohol. The rabbit turned to glance at her, but Terminus just puffed up indignantly.

“How dare you. First you stick me here all alone- without Hoagy- and expect me to work for no pay, and then you won’t even thank me for saving a dying patient in grave condition-”

“She wasn’t dying,” the rabbit protested, and then he must have noticed the briefly panicked expression on Jessi’s face because he quickly turned to reassure her, hands raised placatingly. “You weren’t dying! You were just out for a few days.”

“Days?” Asked Jessi, though it was barely a squeak as her throat closed up and her breath grew short. She fought a wave of lightheadedness. “How many days?” 

The rabbit made an uncertain noise, wobbling a hand back and forth, and she just glared at him. He withered slightly underneath the gaze for a brief moment before shrugging. “Three? Four? It’s getting hard to keep track of time in here.”

Jessi hardly heard him after that. Craning her gaze away from the two of them, she peered out the window in front of her listlessly. Her eyes couldn’t focus on anything again and her chest felt tight, even beneath the soreness of her ribs. Was this what panic felt like? She’d been panicked before, of course, when she was younger. One camping trip they’d had a bear right outside their tent in the campsite and that had been terrifying. She’d nearly been hit by a car on a few occasions because she never looked before she crossed the street and often underestimated the speed of moving vehicles. But the thought of her mother at home worrying about where she was and the fact that she didn’t even know where she was and there was a shirtless talking rabbit here and Herman-

Herman.

“Where’s Herman?” She asked suddenly, and panic gave way to frustration and barely-stifled fury. She’d been brought here, clearly, and she was the only one which meant that either the others weren’t injured or they weren’t here at all. “Where’s my brother?”

“Brother?” The rabbit asked meekly.

“Yes, my brother,” Jessi spat, and in her fear and anger she launched herself off of the bed, ignoring the protests of the rabbit. Terminus had long since stormed out of the room. Her whole upper body protested the movement, as well, but it felt good to be on her own two feet again even if the room did dip and turn dangerously for a second or two. “He’s this big-” she held a hand out to her side, trying to judge his height. “And he’s got messy hair, same color as me, and brown eyes and he’s missing a tooth.” 

“Look, it’s a lot to explain-”

“I don’t care! My entire school disappeared and Herman and Clancy are missing and I want to know where they are. Tell me what’s going on. Right now.” 

The rabbit looked guilty, or at least as guilty as a rabbit could look (and it was strange how expressive he was, given that Jessi had no prior experience in reading the emotions of rabbits). “I don’t know where they are exactly,” he said carefully, and Jessi felt the sudden urge to punch him in the face but she couldn’t move from her spot because her feet felt like lead. “But we can help you find them. We just need you to explain everything you know, and then we’ll explain, too. Deal?” 

Jessi was silent, staring at him. She didn’t want to sit down and hand out information when Herman and Clancy had been dragged into some kind of freaky void and were now missing and had been for days, apparently, assuming anyone was telling the truth about how long Jessi had been here. She wanted to know where she was and what they’d done to bring her here. She wanted to get home immediately. She wanted to know why he was a walking, talking rabbit and why the other man just seemed to accept that without any sort of questions.

But the rabbit seemed to read all of that behind the fury in her eyes. “My brother’s missing too,” he offered, and though it felt like some sort of consolation or pity to Jessi there was none of that in his tone. “And I dunno where he is, either, but I know how we can find him. And your brother. And everybody, okay? I just need you to help me. Please.”

“Why?” Jessi demanded. “You do it. Or go find someone else to do it, I don’t even know where I am or how I got here.”

The rabbit shook his head. “We’re the only ones from our world who ended up here. Me and Terminus and the professor. And you’re the only one from your world who ended up here. Whoever else got taken with you- they’re out there,” he gestured out the window, and Jessi turned to look at the neverending clouds. “Think it had to do with that key you’ve got on. But we don’t know everything, and we think maybe you can help us figure it out.” 

Jessi looked at the key, and then back to the window, and then at the rabbit. The aching in her head hadn’t quite subsided but her vision was clear enough to understand that the white of the room was suffocating and the thought of it all made frustrated tears threaten to spring to her eyes, but she forced them back. Whatever was going on, he’d promised her explanations. She didn’t have anything else to lose, not really. Just more time and maybe more of her sanity, but it was starting to feel like all of that was slipping away. She’d already lost so much time and all of reality seemed to be falling apart in a much more real way than it had back when the school disappeared, which felt like hours ago but had apparently been days. She took a shuddering breath in.

“Fine,” she said. “But you’re going to tell me everything.” 

Thirty-five minutes later, give or take, Jessi was seated at one end of a very long table in a very fancy dining hall. There was no food on the table, thankfully, because the thought of eating anything made her stomach churn again. The chairs were padded and all, but they were pretty short- in fact the table was just short in general, even though the ceiling stretched above them for dozens of feet. Terminus was at the other end, seeming generally uninterested. Jessi wondered if he’d voluntarily showed up or if the others dragged him in. They didn’t seem to get along much at all. The rabbit was standing across the room next to a large chalkboard that was currently being written on by one more figure, the last one to enter. Said figure just happened to be a Disney character, a fact that made Jessi’s head hurt so badly that she was just trying very hard to ignore him and instead focused on the grain pattern of the table they were seated at. 

The rabbit had explained very little on the way there. But for one thing, his name was Oswald, which Jessi supposed was as good of a name for a rabbit as any. He’d lead her out of the medical room and into a vast hallway that seemed to be tall enough for giants, and then she hadn’t been able to follow the rest of the path they’d taken because every hallway looked the same and the white walls and brightly colored rugs just made her eyes hurt. She’d thought she’d seen a walking broom at one point but dismissed it as a hallucination because she didn’t want to think about how else it would be real otherwise. At one point they’d passed by a garden, the edges of which were surrounded by a bright fog just like the clouds she’d seen from the windows of the medical room. It was like the entire place was just suspended in a cloud. For all she knew, it was. He’d told her that she was in a castle- Disney castle, which Jessi had thought was a joke at first. But then he’d taken her to the dining hall and there was a duck there that looked oddly familiar and Jessi realized that, no, he hadn’t been joking at all. He was serious. Dead serious.

She had a cup of tea in front of her that was too bitter to drink, but she kept denying offers for sugar or milk anyways. She just didn’t like tea to begin with and somehow she didn’t think she’d be able to keep anything down. Oswald and the duck were discussing something under their breaths together currently, so Jessi was focusing on literally anything else just so her brain didn’t break entirely. She chose to look at Terminus, who was filing his nails down on the far end of the table and still looking like he didn’t want to be there at all. 

She only vaguely recognized the duck standing across the room, and the more she thought about it the more she realized she couldn’t even say where she had seen him before. But his design was familiar enough that she knew him to be a Donald Duck clone- or, well, family member, whatever they went with. She knew she could have recognized Donald himself and maybe even his uncle, the rich one, but this duck didn’t look quite like either of them. His grey hair (feathers?) stuck out from the side of his head in a very Einstein-like manner and he had spectacles on the bridge of his… bill? He wore a lab coat, too, as if the image of a mad scientist wasn’t the first thing that popped her mind at the sight of him to begin with. She was sure she’d seen him before but most cartoons blended together in her mind. She’d never been big on Disney and neither had Herman. She got by with passing knowledge of most important movies, she guessed, but anything else was lost on her.

Jessi took another sip of the very bitter tea, made a face, and set the cup back down. Her mind had long since faded into a state of dull acceptance. Or maybe just confusion. Either way, she was grateful her subconscious was letting her roll with this strange turn of events long enough to at least gather information about what was going on. She felt somehow responsible in doing so, anyways, since apparently she was the only one who’d arrived to this castle. If nothing else she could relay it back to everyone when she got back and then get put into therapy for speaking nonsense about ducks and rabbits. She could have said it was just like Alice in Wonderland if that weren’t so painfully on the nose.

“So!” said Oswald suddenly, clapping his hands together. Jessi glanced over with half-hearted interest towards the duo standing by the chalkboard, wondering if he was finally done chatting to the duck about whatever was so important they couldn’t share it with the others. “I think we all have a lot to talk about and time is working against us. Professor,” he glanced at the wild-haired duck, and then gestured to Jessi, who he’d exchanged names with in the hallway, “this is Jessi. Jessi, this is-”

“I know him,” Jessi interrupted. She didn’t even think about it, it just jumped off of her tongue as soon as the window presented itself. She couldn’t stop thinking about how familiar he looked and it bothered her and she needed some kind of answer for that before she could think about anything else. “He’s- he looks like a Disney character. This is ridiculous.” The whole thing was just ridiculous and nonsensical. 

Oswald laughed a little uncomfortably, looking between the two of them with shifty eyes. The duck didn’t even seem to notice that Oswald had stopped talking to him, because he was still working away at the chalkboard with vigor. “I mean, so am I, but you didn’t say anything about that…”

Jessi stared at Oswald. He had the design of a cartoon, sure (that had to be why he looked so strange in a way she couldn’t quite place earlier), but he didn’t look even remotely familiar. Not one of the big mascots, anyways. Not a mouse of a duck or a… whatever Goofy was. She squinted after a second or two, shaking her head slightly.

He stared in return, looking slightly upset at first and then just a tinge desperate. “What, you recognized him but not me? I was in a video game! Several of them!”

“I don’t remember his name or anything, but yeah,” she said, slightly awkward with how disappointed he seemed. She glanced down the table, caught sight of Terminus again, and pointed in his direction, feeling a sudden need to justify herself, or maybe just to stop Oswald from being upset because that would be wildly inconvenient when she was trying to get information from him. “I don’t recognize him, either. I’m not- we just don’t own that many Disney movies, just the classics.”

“I am a classic!” Oswald wailed, disappointment giving way to frustration. “I’m Mickey’s brother!”

At the same time, Terminus waved a hand dismissively (though not without an overly dramatic eye roll that Jessi could spot even from all the way down the length of the table). “No one watches my movie anymore.”

At least one of them was handling the situation matter-of-factly. Jessi chose not to ask how a rabbit could be related to a mouse or how Oswald had stayed out of the spotlight for so long with a relation like that.The whole situation felt more and more absurd as it stretched on, and she found herself just in silent disbelief over the whole thing all over again. Jessi, who was very quickly becoming even more confused and fed up with everyone in the room than she had been before, was somehow very grateful that the duck then chose that time to turn around from his chalkboard. 

“Alright!” He looked at Jessi, and then at Oswald, who was tugging lightly on one of his ears out of stress. “Oswald, what are you doing up here? You aren’t a part of the lecture! Sit down, go, go, sit!”

“But-” Oswald protested, but the duck physically started shoving him towards a chair.

“What, you gonna call the professor to explain the- all of the- you gonna call him to explain everything and then not listen? Is that what you wanna do?”

“I was just gonna introduce you!” 

“Introduce me? I does the introducing around here! Now, let’s see. You-” the duck squinted down the table towards Terminus and then scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. “Bah. I know you. You-” this time he squinted at Jessi. “You… you, ah…”

“I already told you,” said the now-seated Oswald, who looked even more frustrated now that he’d been shoved into a chair. He had his legs crossed, one arm propped up on the table and supporting his head. One foot was tapping impatiently. “You wouldn’t recognize her. She’s from the real world.” 

“The real world?” Cried the professor, and Oswald looked about two seconds away from just giving the whole thing up entirely, but then the duck laughed. “Of course! Of course I know that. That’s what I’m giving the lecture about. Why’re you even here if you’re just going to tell me all the things I’m going to tell you? Now then. I am professor Ludwig Von Drake.” He turned around to his chalkboard, scrawling his name across what may or may not have been something important. “And today we- hm.” He suddenly seemed to realize that he’d written his name over some of his own notes, and went about rewriting said notes down on a free space of the board, holding up one hand. “Give me just a second here.”

“I already told him what you told me,” Oswald informed Jessi while this was going on. She’d recounted everything she knew about the situation during their trip to the dining hall, which wasn’t much. Just the school disappearing and then everything that had followed, from her first trip there to everyone at the scene vanishing in front of her eyes. “So believe me, this is already as short as it’s gonna get with him.” 

Jessi wasn’t sure if he expected her to thank him for that, but she nodded anyways, mimicking his position and cupping her chin in one hand. 

Von Drake took a half-step back from the board once he was done, nodded to himself, and dusted off his hands as he set the chalk down. “Alrighty,” he said, turning on a heel, and Jessi vaguely thought that the way he rolled his r’s was going to annoy her very quickly. “Which of you can tell me what this is?” He jabbed a feathered finger at a drawing on the board. It was a big circle with two circles inside of it, and it looked to Jessi like a drawing of the earth, one that showed the crust and the mantle and the core.

“A circle,” said Terminus from the end of the table, very unhelpfully. Jessi had half a mind to just throw her teacup at him if he spoke up again, which she supposed would truly be testament to how mad this place was already driving her. Or maybe just how exasperating he was acting. She didn’t really want to pass judgement on her mental state when she was still processing that she was in a castle with Disney characters. 

“The earth,” she said afterwards, because Oswald was looking at her expectantly and she didn’t want to let Terminus have any real influence on the lecture. 

“Wrong!” cried Ludwig, and then he laughed to himself again. “Both wrong! Here. I’ll tell you. This-” he gestured to the outermost ring of the circle, and then pointed at Jessi. “Is your world. The ‘real world’, some people call it, which is ridica- ridic- which is just silly! But it’s what it’s called and so we gonna call it that.” 

He wrote ‘real world’ on the outer ring of the circle, and then skipped over the next ring entirely and instead pointed at the center circle.

“And this one right here is our world. The other world, that’s what it’s called, because it’s not the real one. It’s the other one.” He labeled that one, too, and then pointed at the ring in the center. “And this one here isn’t supposed to exist. Pretend it doesn’t exist. You can’t see it right now.”

“Why?” asked Jessi, who felt like the explanation would be a lot shorter if they weren’t ignoring part of the diagram. 

“Why?” Ludwig echoed, and seemed confused for a second himself before shrugging dismissively. “Because I says so, that’s why! Now see, these worlds are like the layers of a cake. And your world is on the top, and ours is on the bottom. And sometimes they mix because they’ve got a hole.” 

“A hole?” echoed Jessi incredulously. 

“A keyhole,” said the professor, but Oswald cut him off.

“How do you think our stories got there?” Oswald asked Jessi rhetorically. “Walt brought stories back from here every time he went back over there.”

But Jessi wasn’t listening, though she did vaguely feel her brain for up at the implication that these guys had personally met Walt Disney before. The detail pertaining to her arrival was much more important at the moment. She’d already stood up from her chair and had a hand clasped around the key hanging from her necklace. “You said a keyhole,” she said, and gestured to the key. “Is that how I got here? With the key? What about everybody else?” As far as she knew, she was the only one who had found a key at the school.

“That’s where it gets complicated,” Oswald said. “Normally that is the only way to get here. With those keys- and don’t ask me where they come from, because even I don’t know. We think they’re just a byproduct of the magic in this place. Maybe some part of the world wants our stories to make it back over there, or maybe our worlds are just supposed to be connected. It’s what Walt used, anyway. But…”

“But!” Ludwig took the opportunity to hop back in, and used the stick of chalk to jab excitedly at the ring in-between the two worlds on the diagram. “But you see this place? You see right here? This isn’t supposed to exist,” he repeated. “It’s a space between.”

Jessi looked to Oswald for clarification, who sighed. “Look, we can’t really tell you that much. There’s only so much we can observe when we’re stuck in here- we can’t get out without a key now that we’ve sealed off the castle. But here’s what happened on our side of things.”

He got up from his chair, walking over to the blackboard, and erased the inner circle entirely so that the other world and the space between were combined into one larger circle inside of the real world. Then he drew a tiny, tiny circle again in the center of that. 

“Our whole world? It got pulled into the space between. This castle,” he pointed at the tiny circle, “is the only thing that’s left. We-” he gestured between himself, Ludwig, and Terminus, “are the only people who are left from our world. The others are… out there somewhere, I guess.” He looked at the circle for a long second, then, his eyes seeming distant before he continued. “And that’s what’s happening to your world. It’s getting pulled in, too. Just a lot slower, for some reason.” 

With one finger, he started erasing some of the line that separated the space between and real world. It was just tiny gaps- gaps that represented a field in a small town, for example.

“And that’s gonna be the last thing to happen to your world,” added Ludwig, who still sounded far too invested in the lecture. It made him seem almost excitedly uncaring about the whole thing. Maybe he was just detached. Scientists tended to be good at that. 

Oswald wince, and Jessi looked between the two of them, heart racing with a sudden urgency. It was the same sort of panic she’d felt in the hospital room. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

“We don’t… really know what’s going on out there,” supplied Oswald carefully. “Or how everything’s reacting now that it’s… you know, together. But the professor has some equipment in here with him, and the readings… they’re not good, Jessi.”

“Tell me what you mean,” she demanded again, punctuating every word. “I don’t want a fancy explanation. What’s going to happen to my world What’s going to happen to the people in there?” She pointed at the diagram on the board.

Oswald looked pained as he glanced between the two doctors in the room, neither of which seemed inclined to answer. Terminus was studying the far wall with great interest, and even Ludwig was much more interested in studying his stick of chalk suddenly.

“Our worlds… they’re really different,” Oswald said, and Jessi bit her tongue to keep from shouting at him for pointing out the obvious instead of just getting to the point. “We don’t think they were ever met to meet like this. Not directly, and not so suddenly. We think… I mean, if we can’t figure out why this is suddenly happening and how to reverse it...” 

He trailed off for a second, looking at the ground before looking to one of the windows of the dining room. The rest came out in a rush, almost faster than Jessi could process. 

“We think both worlds are going to be destroyed.”


	3. The Onset

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Hazel had read enough books to know that a line like this one is the line down which your life breaks in two. And you have to think very carefully about whether you want to cross it, because once you do it’s very hard to get back to the world you left behind. And sometimes you break a barrier that no one knew existed, and then everything you knew before crossing the line is gone.   
> But sometimes you have a friend to rescue. And so you take a deep breath and then step over the line and into the darkness ahead.”   
> -Breadcrumbs

No one got any sleep that evening. Not that Jessi knew of, anyways. She’s been ushered into a guest bedroom and told that she could leave in the morning, but only if she wanted, because no one could really force her to do any of this and everyone knew it. She’d already agreed to it but Oswald seemed to be far from confident in her ability to keep promises. 

She lay awake for hours on end listening to footsteps in the hallway and occasional banging from the lab, which was all the way down the long hallway but since the castle was so devoid of life it was hard to miss the noises. 

The rest of the lecture (because that was what it was, might as well call it that) had been a blur, though that didn’t really matter much because no one knew what to say after news like that. Everything they did know was vague enough as it was. 

It was some sort of magic, Oswald said, and the very thought of magic being a thing she’d have to worry about here made Jessi even more forlorn because she didn’t know how to deal with that. She’d never been taught about magic and she’d never run into it before so how was she supposed to fight it? How was she even supposed to justify its existence? 

But some sort of magic had attempted to take down the barriers without regard for consequence and had instead created an area in-between both worlds, a place that was neither here nor there. And the whole of… Disney, she guessed, because she didn’t know what else to call it- it was all stuck in there now.

It hadn’t entirely managed to break apart the second barrier, though. That was the problem. It had cracked it enough that pieces were falling through, like glass slowly chipping away or ice melting one drop at a time. And it was hard to say who exactly had been pulled through from the real world. As far as Jessi knew, the school had been the first building to go (because otherwise it would’ve been all over national news), but the people… who could say how many people were stuck there?

And they didn’t even know what it was like in there. A mix of both worlds was bound to be highly unstable. Oswald couldn’t even guess if everyone there had been turned human to try and find a balance or if they’d all been turned into cartoons instead (cartoons, what if Herman was a cartoon, of all things?) or if anyone remembered anything (let alone who they were) and they couldn’t find out because they couldn’t leave. 

That was the catch. The price they had to pay for closing off the castle and keeping the three of them safe from whatever would happen to them out there. They couldn’t leave, not without a key, and no one could get in without a key, either. The barrier they’d put up (an ability the castle had always possessed, apparently, because of… something to do with light, Jessi hadn’t cared enough to really listen about how it worked so long as it did work) came with a keyhole, as most barriers apparently did. Which meant that Jessi could come in and out just fine. 

Only Jessi could come in and out.

She had been so frightened, so beyond furious by being dumped with the news that the world might be ending that she’d angrily tried shoving the key at Oswald multiple times, but each time he grabbed it it just appeared back on Jessi somewhere. In her pocket. Around her necklace. In her hand. 

“It’s bound to you,” he’d said, and he’d been angry, too. Jessi wondered now if he would have been the one to go if he’d had the chance- if he would have been more willing to leave than she was, just to find his brother. And to fix both worlds. “You found it. We can’t take it.”

But maybe someone could unbind it, he’d suggested afterwards. None of them knew magic of any sort, but if anyone out there in the space between remembered any sort of magic- if Jessi could bring them back to the castle to work with the professor on fixing the barriers, if they could send anyone else out with the key to gather people to the castle then she’d be free.

Relatively speaking. She didn’t have a long-term plan, because she could bring Herman and Clancy back to the real world, sure, but they wouldn’t say there. Not if things didn’t get fixed. And there was the problem that they didn’t even know how well magic worked out there yet.

Still, it was a temporary responsibility. That was how she justified it to herself. Her plan was simple- find Herman and Clancy, find somebody who knew any sort of magic, get this awful key unbound from her and then send somebody else out to find people who can fix the problem and get them home without the worlds ending. 

The hard part was getting them home. The holes leading to the real world were fickle, at best, the way they kept opening and closing and popping up in various places just for a split-second. There was no way to judge if they’d be able to find a way to get them home without completely restoring the typical barrier and being able to access the keyhole properly. Jessi thought that was a bridge she’d cross once she got to it. Or, rather, when the person who would fix the barriers got to it. Whoever that would be. She didn’t even know how many magic users she had to work with or what she should be looking for out there in terms of appearance. 

Oswald’s relief had been palpable when she’d agreed to go out into the space between, but Jessi had been clear in making him very aware that she wasn’t doing it for him. She wasn’t doing it for anyone but herself, because Jessi was fully capable of admitting she was selfish sometimes. Selfish enough to want to save her best friend and her brother and let someone else handle the responsibility. Quite frankly, she didn’t care who the others were missing or who they wanted back at the castle. As soon as she could bow out of this whole nonsensical mess, she fully planned on it. 

She ran the information over in her head on repeat. It played over a backdrop of the events that had happened all of yesterday every time she closed her eyes. In the end it was easier to watch the ceiling.

The castle didn’t get any darker at night. Maybe that was half of the reason she couldn’t sleep. Aside from the weight of the responsibility that threatened to crush her, anyways. She hadn’t bothered asking why, but she figured it was because they weren’t really looking out at any sort of sky. They were just seeing the physical barrier separating them from the space between.

Or something. If nothing else, Jessi was getting good at making random guesses that involved nonsensical terms. 

She was still trying to process all of it. Her brain just wouldn’t shut down. So much had happened in- well, not necessarily a short amount of time, as it had apparently been about four days, but she had been unconscious for most of it thanks to literally dropping through the barrier and falling many feet down into the gardens. According to the others. Still, even four days was a very short amount of time to attempt to process the fact that your world had been running parallel to another dimension for years and years and nobody knew about it about save for some dead movie-maker and whoever he’d passed the company on to. 

She’d given up on checking her phone for the time because it just made her more antsy and the fact that she was wasting battery made her twitchy on top of that. It didn’t even work, anyways. No cell service providers had been pulled through yet, she guessed, and the thought made her smile wryly which was probably an indication that she was incredibly tired. She wondered how many unseen texts she was getting from her mother, or if she’d already been pulled through, too. How was Jessi supposed to know? 

After hours and hours of at least attempting to close her eyes long enough to fall asleep, Jessi rolled over to check the time on her phone one more time. It was a little before five in the morning, which seemed to be as good a time as any to give up the fight and just leave. She felt slightly better physically, in any case, which was as good as it was going to get. Her bruises hadn’t subsided yet, of course, but the ache wasn’t quite as persistent. The headache hadn’t left either but she chalked that up to the fact that she had been awake for just about twenty-four hours at that point. 

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a long while, elbows resting on her knees as she looked towards the window. At some point she’d been supplied dark curtains to cover up the light from the clouds outside- or, rather, Terminus had come by and attempted to sell them to her (despite the fact that she literally had no money on her) and Oswald had shown up to argue with him until he agreed to hang them up for free. Jessi could’ve done it herself, but punching the man in the face and just hanging them up on her own was far more trouble than she had the energy for. She’d been genuinely tired when she first went to bed, but now it had just faded into a buzzing in the back of her head and a lightheadedness that made it difficult to focus. 

The hallway was empty when she pushed the heavy door to her room open and stepped out, and the light hurt her eyes again though it was scarcely any brighter than it had been in the guest bedroom. She turned her phone on long enough to take a look in the camera and confirmed that her eyes were as red as they felt, and they had pronounced bags underneath them, which was a sign that this whole thing was going to start off just great. She’d probably scare off whoever she met first out there. Her braid looked more like a tangled mane than an actual hair style.

She made the prudent decision to avoid the lab as she started on her way around the castle. She’d undoubtedly get caught up in something that would take too much of her time and, really, she wanted to get this underway immediately. She had no idea where any of the hallways lead, or where Oswald was even staying (regardless of everything, he seemed to be the most composed member of the group), so she took to wandering without direction instead.

It would almost have been peaceful under different circumstances. As it was, the sheer exhaustion and soreness and the anxiety churning in her gut made it difficult to focus on anything but her feet moving from tile to tile. On more than one occasion one of those walking brooms passed by her, but Jessi only stopped long enough to stare as they walked by. She didn’t think to stop and ask them for directions. They were only brooms, after all.

The quiet and the light filtering in from the windows lining the hallways gave it an otherworldly feeling, which was more accurate than Jessi cared to think about at the moment. That was the problem. It was all too light, in such stark contrast with the storm that had been brewing back her own world. It made it feel like nothing was really wrong here.

But it was. She didn’t like thinking about the situation the others were stuck in just because it was so much easier to focus on her own goals, but they were three survivors out of… who knew how many. Jessi couldn’t even count how many Disney movies there were, let alone all the characters in said movies. Not even characters, just people. To not know if the rest of your entire world survived being pulled into this new space, or if they’d been changed in ways you wouldn’t recognize… she didn’t envy them. The fact that Jessi had retained who she was, and kept her memory, that meant that the others from her world had to be the same, surely. It couldn’t just be a side effect of having the key. She wanted to believe that, at least. But she couldn’t speak for anyone the others had lost. Oswald had lost his brother, too- she at least had to remember that. 

That’s what it came down to, really. They were just as clueless as she was and she was literally the only chance they had to figure any of this out- the only chance to find or save anyone. They were probably just as frustrated as she was, only they were stuck feeling entirely helpless on top of it. It was easy for Jessi to forget, in the chaos of the last several hours, that this had happened just as quickly to them on a much larger scale. This was new to them, too. No one knew what was going on or what they were doing but they had no choice to work together. They were people, too, in some kind of sense. They felt the same emotions she did, or at least she assumed as much.

The whirlwind of chaos that had followed upon her awakening in the castle had covered up any sort of awkwardness they would otherwise have faced due to being complete strangers being forced to work together, but Jessi’s face soured at the thought of having to return to the castle again after this. She just hoped they didn’t expect to get buddy-buddy with her. None of them really seemed the type, fortunately, but the strangeness of the current situation was only tolerable thus far because she didn’t have to really get to know any of them. She’d been so angry about the disappearance of Clancy and Herman. If these three turned their own losses into a sob story things were going to become unbearable very quickly.

Jessi was so caught up in her thoughts as she wandered that she didn’t even notice she’d come back to the dining hall from yesterday until she was standing directly in front of the doors, which were slightly open, just enough that she could peer through. Oswald was sitting on one of the chairs near the end they’d been sitting at last night, staring at the chalkboard that was still set up across from him. His fingers (Jessi had to stare for a moment as she noticed he only had four on each hand) were laced together, and he appeared either pensive or anxious. It was difficult to read his eyes, and she wondered what he was thinking about. Maybe he doubted her as much as she doubted the rest of them. He had no reason to vouch for a random teenager, technical-adult or otherwise, being able to figure out any of this or bring anyone back. The thought made her slightly bitter, though she knew on some level she was projecting more than anything. Maybe he was just thinking about how tired he was. 

She stood there, half-in and half-out of the doorway for a second or two, debating if she wanted to say anything before deciding that one way or another he was going to have to snap out of it to tell her how to leave. She didn’t have any idea how the key thing worked, anyways.

“I’m ready to leave,” Jessi said without any prelude. 

And it was true. She was beyond ready to be out of the castle and somewhere else, whatever ‘somewhere else’ was. She’d thought previously that the bright walls had been suffocating but she hadn’t realized how true it was until now. She felt sick to her stomach, half from exhaustion and half from the air being too still. She needed fresh air. The gardens were of no help because they weren’t outside, not really, they were merely suspended in a barrier like everything else in this place. 

Oswald was, surprisingly, not very startled by her voice. At the very least, it didn’t look like he was. He turned to glance at her out of the corner of his eyes before doing a double-take, and then looked at the walls around him as if looking for something before turning back to her, this time with his eyebrows (or lack thereof) furrowed.

“What time is it?” He asked, and he sounded more awake than Jessi was but maybe that wasn’t saying much. 

He very well could’ve been awake all night, too. From the way he talked to the others it seemed like he was the leader of some sort around here, though that didn’t say much given there was only three of them. And it made sense anyways, if he was really Mickey’s brother. In the back of her mind, she wondered how she’d gone so long without knowing Mickey Mouse had a brother, and thought that if she got home from all of this she’d have much more Disney trivia to help her get through party games, if nothing else.

Jessi checked her phone. “Five thirty,” she responded, which was more or less accurate.

“Does that work?” Asked Oswald, who seemed more interested in the phone than in anything else she’d said. 

Jessi shook her head. “It’s still got battery, but no signal.”

“You could leave it here,” he suggested. “You’re leaving anyways, and I bet the professor could find a way to get it to connect to at least the castle. We’ll give it back once he’s got it working. We could keep in touch while you’re out there?”

Jessi stared at him for a split-second, weighing how good of an idea that was. Oswald seemingly picked up on the reason behind her suspicion.

“He won’t break it or anything. Promise!”

She wasn’t sure how truthful that actually was, because from what she remembered of the duck (and what she had picked up from yesterday and the previous night) he was… eccentric, at best. Eccentric but a genius, she guessed, which meant that in the worst-case scenario he just snapped the phone in half and built her a new one that actually worked. She didn’t have anything to lose, anyways, so she sighed and slid the phone across the table to Oswald after crossing the threshold of the doors.

“I need you to show me how this key thing is supposed to work,” she said afterwards, cutting right back to the chase. 

It was clear that Oswald was uncertain because there was a hesitance behind the forced optimism in his voice. “Right, you, uh, you said you’re ready to go. You sure? I mean, did you sleep?”

“No, I didn’t sleep,” Jessi responded shortly. “But I’m sure.”

“Guess we don’t have time to waste,” Oswald agreed with some sort of a sigh, twirling the phone in-between his fingers. Jessi nodded just because her stomach was so tight with nerves that opening her mouth again felt like a bad idea. She wondered if Oswald was glad she was just trying to get it over with or if it frustrated him. Either way, he stood up from the table and gestured with a hand for her to follow him down the hallway. 

“I should probably warn you,” he started as they were walking. His tone was conversational, or it tried to seem that way, but there was a tired sort of tenseness behind it and Jessi remembered that he was just as anxious as she was about how well this would actually work out for any of them. “We’re not really sure where you’ll end up.”

Jessi gave him a look out of the corner of her eye, and he quickly corrected himself.

“I mean, you’ll end up in-between! In that place. Of course you will! But the keyhole is kind of like… it’s like a cannon. Just sorta shoots you out there.” He shrugged.

Which explained the reason she felt like she’d fallen twenty stories down when she woke up, Jessi guessed. 

“How do I get back here, then?” She demanded. “You don’t even know where I’ll be.”

“That’s the good thing about the whole world getting pulled in at once, isn’t it? Everything’s in the same place as before. Or it should be, anyway! The castle is always North.”

“Compass might be handy, then,” Jessi said, though she figured if the stars were the same then she’d always have Polaris to rely on.

“We already thought of that!” With flourish, Oswald produced a bag from… seemingly nowhere? The pocket of his shorts or something? Jessi didn’t want to think about it. In any case, it was a plain-looking saddlebag, one that she could sling over her shoulder. 

Jessi carefully took it and peered inside. There was a map in there, no doubt of whatever their world had looked like before. A compass, a few pens and pencils, and an empty journal. There was some food- easy to preserve stuff like bread and dried fruits- and a canteen of water. Standard survival things, and for a second she felt her heart race at the fact that it kind of was a survival situation. Like a camping trip, unless she landed right in the middle of a whole town of people who could be brought back to the castle. And even then, who knew how long it would take for them to get there? 

She just nodded as she closed the bag, not bothering with a ‘thank you’. 

“And, uh…” Oswald trailed off, tugging lightly at an ear again, and Jessi sighed inwardly. Hesitance was never a sign that she was going to hear something she liked.

Oswald stopped in mid-stride, fishing around in another pocket and presenting Jessi with a folded up piece of paper. On it was a short list of names, a few of which she recognized, others she didn’t. Mickey, Donald, Huey… it went on with several more names. She could guess right away what it was.

“I know you’re gonna go find your brother first,” Oswald said, eyes glancing to the side to avoid meeting Jessi’s. “But, uh. Just- the rest of us are looking for people too, y’know.” 

Jessi was silent as she looked over the list, and after a second of two of watching Oswald twiddle his thumbs out of the corner of her eye she finally looked up and nodded, though the movement was nearly imperceptible. Oswald looked just about ready to melt with relief, but he straightened up and nodded in return.

“Thanks. I mean it. I know this all happened real fast, and I wish we could-”

“Don’t worry,” said Jessi, and her tone was tight even though she really felt tired enough to truthfully say that she didn't even care at this point. It didn’t matter. “I get it.”

Oswald looked like he wanted to say more, but didn’t. “We’ve labeled the map for you, too,” he said as he started walking again, towards the gates of the castle. “I mean, you won’t know where you land right away. But you can ask around and figure it out and then it’ll make getting back here easier.”

“Right.”

She was only half-listening. Her mind was already sorting it all into tasks, breaking the whole thing down. Step one was find out where she was. Step two was find whoever she could, anyone with magic, anyone from her world, anyone who matched the list- provided she could recognize them. She had the vague worry that things wouldn’t be so simple, that maybe getting pulled through like that had shifted them in some way she wouldn’t recognize. What if they looked different? What if they didn’t even know their own names?

When she pulled herself out of her thoughts again, Oswald was still talking. She wasn’t sure how much she’d missed.

“-And we’ve got a pretty big library here. Huge archives. We’re gonna look for anything about those keys- Walt probably left some notes. That or somebody else did. Course, it’d be easier if we knew how they were organized...” he paused for a second, looking pensive as he trailed off, and then looked at her over his shoulder. “Do me a favor, would’ya? Add Jiminy onto that list I gave you.”

Jessi stared at him for a beat. “Cricket?” She asked, both seeking clarification and airing her absolute disbelief once her brain had processed the request and actually thought about the name.

“There another one you know of?”

“Guess not,” she said, and took out the list to scribble the name onto the bottom. Inwardly she thought that finding a cricket would be the very least of her worries once she was out there, not to mention absurdly difficult, but she didn’t say as much.

“Thanks,” said Oswald again. “I don’t really think anybody else took the time to sort through all the books and records down there. He’d be a big help.”

Jessi made a noncommittal noise of agreement because all she really remembered about that character was a whole lot of educational shorts, same as Von Drake. So she guessed he fit the bill. 

“Milo, too, he’d probably enjoy going through all that stuff,” Oswald added, and then he started listing off more names that Jessi cared to write down and she just resolved that she’d send anyone back to the castle rather than spend ages hunting down specific ones on the list. She didn’t even know who Milo was, as any character who wasn’t a princess or a mascot was basically too obscure for her to recognize easily. She realized that she was absolutely the least qualified person for this job.

That was that, as far as she was concerned, but Oswald kept rambling about things he felt she had to know. It was like he was just getting more and more worked up with nerves, but nothing he said was of any real consequence to Jessi so she tuned him out. His talking faded into the background rushing in her ears. She wondered how ironic it would be if her first step out into the space between was just going to end with her passing out and falling flat on her face from exhaustion. It would be a fitting start to things, all things considered. 

Her mind wandered far as they kept walking, partially because there was still so much to remember and keep track of and partially because she was too tired to focus on much, and she didn’t even realize that Oswald had stopped until she was two or three steps past him. Looking back over her shoulder, her eyes trailed upwards from his form and focused on the large, imposing doors they were now facing.

Both of them were silent for all of two seconds, but it seemed to stretch on for ages.

“Well,” said Oswald slowly. “This is it, I guess.”

“What do I do?” Asked Jessi, and he shrugged.

“Just open ‘em. We can’t get them to budge but whoever has the key can probably leave just fine.”

“That’s it?”

“Should be it, yeah.”

That felt very underwhelming to Jessi, who wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but she simply nodded regardless. Both of them stood silently for another second or so before she started moving.

“See you around?” Said Oswald once her back was facing him. “We’ll keep working here while you’re out there.”

“Sure,” said Jessi grudgingly, who didn’t want to think about how she’d have to possibly make repeat runs to the castle or else end up with fifty people trailing along behind her because she’d been stupid enough to think she could tolerate that many people at once on their way back. Extended treks back and forth across a whole world somehow seemed better than driving a literal bus full of people all in one trip. 

It was weider still how casual the departure sounded, and she realized that she’d essentially just become a part of a team. A team involving her and Ludwig and Oswald, in any case, because she still had no idea where Terminus fit into any of this. It was a strange way to look at the situation, and it was difficult to think of it that way. To think that she wasn’t just working for her and Clancy and Herman. 

The doors were intimidating once she was right up close to them. She wasn’t sure why everything in the castle was so huge, but even the doors were sized for people many times taller than her. She hadn’t thought to ask about the architecture of the place. Maybe it was just something else she’d have to accept. It was Disney, regardless of how hard it was to think about that. Some things just didn’t make any sense in a place like that and she couldn’t expect this world to be like hers anyways. But as big as they were, they opened easily when she pushed on it even just lightly. 

She caught sight of Oswald out of the corner of her eye as she did so, and he was standing still, and the look on his face was one of disbelief and slight awe and… maybe a bit of jealousy. Jealousy or just longing to go out instead. It was the same thing, she guessed. She wanted to tell him that she’d give him the key in a heartbeat, that she’d leave him to go find everybody else instead of her but that would be a pointless thing to say when nothing could be done about it. 

Her first thought was to be careful as she was leaving. And that’s all it was, really, a thought, because as soon as she had one foot solidly planted in the space outside of the castle she realized there was no space outside of the castle. It was just a bright void, just like she’d thought but not really known until then, and her foot plunged down and the rest of her followed and she heard the door slam shut above her as she fell backwards. 

Jessi tried to keep her eyes open but the white was all she saw, despite the wind rushing past her face that signalled she was clearly moving. Her already-tense stomach leapt up into her throat as she fell and she ended up squinting her eyes shut tightly just to not think about it. Her own yelling was partially drowned out by the noise in her ears as she continued to drop down. 

How had Ludwig described it? The layers of a cake? She couldn’t be sure which direction she was really falling, if there even was a direction, but she guessed moving so quickly from one layer to the next when they had no real physical position would feel just like falling, somehow. The theory made as much sense as the concept of various dimensions, to her. 

She only knew something had changed when the color behind her eyes was different. They were watering when she pried them open, and she suddenly realized that the air wasn’t stinging as much as it should have been now. It was as though she’d slowed down, which quite frankly was a blessing if only due to the fact that Jessi wasn’t excited about the prospect of being splattered all over wherever she landed. 

But the slower falling thing was only a fleeting thought as she also realized that she was closer to the ground. Incredibly close, in fact, and she barely had time to register the fact that the white was gone and she blearily recognized an ocean surrounding an island before the branches rushed up to meet her.

Acting quickly and purely on instinct, Jessi shielded her face with her arms and as she felt smaller branches slice up her hands she was very grateful she was wearing her jacket. The breath was knocked out of her as her ribcage slammed against a much larger branch, and before she could get a grip she slipped off backwards and landed with full-force on her back on the next branch down. Her bag landed beside her several seconds later and she had a passing feeling of thankfulness that it hadn’t hit her in the head.

Still wheezing for air after the first impact, she rolled off sideways and fell straight down onto the ground, where she landed on her back once more in the dirt, entirely out of breath and entire body screaming with pain. Stars danced in front of her vision and she thought for several seconds that it would’ve been much more pleasant to have just been knocked out entirely again.

She lay there for a very long time, waiting for her breathing to return to normal though her ribs still stung every time she inhaled. Cursing under her breath, she took great effort to roll herself onto her front, propping herself up with her elbows until she felt that she could move into a sitting position. It was fortunate that she hadn’t eaten anything in many hours because if the fall itself hadn’t upset her stomach enough (more than it had already been that morning) then the impact certainly would have. 

But she felt more awake than she had previously. There was that, if nothing else. Not that it negated the fact that she’d become more bruised in the last few days than she had throughout the entire rest of her life, but at least she could focus, provided she could get up on her feet and start walking. 

That took time, too. Getting into a sitting position was one thing, but getting onto her feet was another. It didn’t help that there was nothing around to really pull herself up with. She nearly fell backwards several times as she tried to slowly rise to her feet, but eventually she managed it.

It was difficult to tell how long it had been since she’d started falling. Oswald could at least have left her with a watch of some kind, seeing as he’d taken the phone away, but the thought didn’t linger long enough for Jessi to really get bitter about it. She was in too much pain to think of much of anything, let alone something that petty. 

As far as she could see there was no sign of life in any direction, which was about what she had expected when she’d learned she was effectively going to be shot out of a cannon. Jessi hobbled her way over to a tree, resting one hand against it as she leaned there for a while, eyes closed and breathing as heavily as she could manage with her ribs hurting as badly as they were. 

And that was all she needed. Just a moment of stillness to catch her breath and gather her resolve. The sky was clear and the fresh air would have been invigorating under better circumstances. It was enough to spur her into continuing. 

And so, with that, Jessi set out in the first direction she rested her eyes on, stepping over the bushes and using the trees to act as her guideposts. She picked up the bag as she walked across the clearing and out into the forest, or perhaps it was a jungle- she wasn’t good at judging trees, of all things. Either way, the air around her was filled with a distinct sense of commencement, the kind that lifted the air right out of your lungs and spurred you onwards towards unforged paths.

**Author's Note:**

> Exactly what's on the tin. This was over on ff.net (still is, technically) but that site is sort of currently getting hacked? So I was like why not move it over here just so it's... up somewhere, and I can actually update while ff.net sorts out its #Issues. All OCs are mine unless I specifically credit them to another person, which will happen in later chapters.
> 
> It's about ten chapters in already, but I'll be a little slow in posting them because I hate formatting.


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